Ah new years day, for hockey fans that means sitting in front of the TV and watching the Winter Classic. Even if your team is not playing it is a must watch because there is nothing like watching an outdoors game. This year is not as special for us since the Pens are not playing, but nothing beats relaxing on new years day and watching a hockey game. It looks like Chicago had some nice weather today, not much snow just overcast and the cold. Great conditions for a hockey game! Detroit and Chicago a both pretty hot teams in the central division only 6 points apart. Detroit has taken all 3 games in the season series so far, it will be a good game for sure!
The Blackhawks came out strong in the first period, throwing big checks and taking it to the Red Wings, they were definitely feeling the home crowd at Wrigley! After the first period they were up 3-1. When the second period started it was all Detroit, exploding for 3 unanswered goals in the second giving them a 4-3 lead going into the third. Only down 1 goal you could see that the Blackhawks could get back into it, but Detroit closed things down and scored 2 goals in 17 seconds! The Blackhawks got one past Conklin with about 9 seconds left to make the game a 6-4 final.
This was definitely a high scoring game, especially compared to the 1-1 game last year. The main reason was probably the weather, no snow like last year and the ice was good throughout the entire game. So players were easily able to pass and shoot the puck. I don’t know if it was because the Pens were not playing in this Winter Classic, but it did not have the feeling like the first one did. But none the less it was a great game to watch and great to see how the NHL is growing and hosting events like these. Will we see the Pens in next years Winter Classic? Who knows….
Did anyone expect this not to happen? At noon today Crosby passed the 1,020,736-vote mark that Jaromir Jagr set in the 2000 All-Star voting. I don’t know why people are so surprised really, back in 2000 not as many people were on the internet. There was no Myspace, no Facebook, Google was only founded 2 years prior, no one knew what a blog was. With the growth of people using the internet and technology more there is no reason to expect Crosby not to break the record. Also being able to vote for all of your players via txt message makes things easier considering most people even old people know how to use text messaging these days. With that said congrats to Crosby, but I don’t know what the big deal is really.
- Malkin is also very close to passing the record as well and might do it since there are still 2 weeks left to vote.
- Also Pens goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury as passed Carey Price to take over the #1 goalie spot in the All-Star game.
Wow when I saw this first clip I was amazed, the refs at the Lightning vs. Avalanche game Thursday really did some poor officiating. Thursday night in Tampa, Milan Hejduk of the Avalanche was taking his shootout chance when goaltender Mike Smith lost control of his stick, this is what transpired after…
Ok for those who don’t know as the rules state, “a goal will be awarded when, during a penalty shot, a shot is disrupted by a deliberately thrown stick.” Now with that said and watching the video you can’t possibly say that Smith threw his stick deliberately. To me it looked like he went for the poke check and then he dropped the stick to make a blocker save. The refs discussed it for a while, why did they not go to Toronto to solve the problem? Instead they awarded a goal to the Avalanche, which would decide the shootout. If the Lightning do not already have enough problems this season, to lose a game like that…wow.
Mats Sundin finally decided on a team, he is now a Vancouver Canuck. That is a sigh of relief for Pens fans as it was down to Vancouver and the Rangers for him. He signed a 2 year contract, we are not sure how much it is worth, but we do know it is less than the 10 million originally offered to him over the summer by the Canucks.
Thanks to MotherPucker for the heads up on this, check out NHL mutants Flickr Page. Someone has taken 2 players a morphed them into 1. How about Anson Kennedy, Mike Malkin, or Sidney Jokenin.
Look like the Winter Classic is already having problems, look at what happented when they were trying to unload a Zamboni at the site….haha
First off sorry for the lack of post over the past few days, we will be posting daily from now on until January 7th when I will be out of town on a business trip. So the biggest story of the week would have to be that Sean Avery will not be returning to the Dallas Stars. This is the decision of the Stars management, not Avery. They made it very clear that they were not going to listen to what Avery had to say, he has already embarrassed the team and himself enough. The Stars have released an official statement on the matter.
The funny this is that Dallas will not be challenging his contract so he will still be getting paid the $15.5 million over the 4 years he was signed for. It’s a pretty good deal for him considering he really only “worked” for 2 months. By next summer he will be able to look for another team is anyone wants to pick him up, would you? As much as you hate him he is still a good player and a very effective agitator. The only thing is…is that worth the chance that he might cause another incident off the ice that gets him suspended and off your roster? I don’t know many teams that would want to take the risk to pick him up.
So is this the end of Avery? Will we see him in the NHL again? I’m sure if he just went away not many people would really care, I know I wouldn’t.
